Apple has sold millions of iPhones without multitasking. I think it's pretty clear by now that normal users don't care. The tech-wannabes do but not the general public. If anyone thinks this will in any way silence the critics they are sorely mistaken. The critics will always find something to bitch about. Multitasking on the iPhone will probably not be implemented in the way critics want it to be so they will still have a hard-on for Apple and its products. Never fear, Apple critics are never satisfied, ever.
Actually, one use that I can see personally for multi-tasking is to be able to keep iMapMyRun going while I change my iPod playlist, or even better while I listen to Slacker for a change of music while running. I don't think this will be limited to just technophiles. This is just the first use off the top of my head and will definitely get used as such at least a couple times a week.
I am happy with the current arrangement with app switching but I think it'll be a good idea for Apple to allow the user to decide how many apps to run at the same time on an app by app basis.
Multitasking could be another settings option with the default set to the current arrangement.
When it's switched on a dialogue should appear to ask the user how many of their apps should be allowed to run in addition to the default apps. Then underneath this should be a switch for each app to enable or disable it's being used for multitasking.
I think with this arrangement everyone can be satisfied.
Apple has sold millions of iPhones without multitasking. I think it's pretty clear by now that normal users don't care. The tech-wannabes do but not the general public. If anyone thinks this will in any way silence the critics they are sorely mistaken. The critics will always find something to bitch about. Multitasking on the iPhone will probably not be implemented in the way critics want it to be so they will still have a hard-on for Apple and its products. Never fear, Apple critics are never satisfied, ever.
It's funny, I would have said exactly the same as you until this past Monday. I've always maintained that non-techy types really couldn't care less about multitasking, but on Monday my wife (far from techy) was complaining that when she'd been looking at her Yelp app, if she clicked to view the map, it automatically launched Maps, but that she had to re-start the Yelp app again to go back to it, so I guess non-techy users do want something along these lines as well.
You are right that the critics will continue to bang on about something though. Lack of Flash maybe, perhaps the lack of a file system. Apple must be gutted that the thing is selling so badly due to all of it's flaws
The iPod and iPhone have 128MB-256MB of RAM (and no virtual memory) and a CPU between 400MHz and 533MHz. Further, apps have been built for years assuming all of that is available to them.
There is, in fact, a huge technical problem with running multiple modern applications at once.
What Apple probably has waiting in the wings (if anything) is an Expose-like UI that switches between recently-used applications smoothly enough that it looks like they're running simultaneously. If it's very ambitious, it will actually page the application to flash storage when switching. But I think it's more likely that Apple will just make properly saving/restoring state part of the approval requirements, and somehow technically discriminate existing apps in a way to make it obvious to the user that they're using a legacy app.
If you're counting on multiple simultaneous GUI apps, you're going to be disappointed.
Unless you jailbreak and enable multitasking like we do today and it works just fine. What your suggesting is pretty much already in the iPhone OS. There's nothing stopping a developer from having the state saved and on relaunch resuming where the app was left off. This would be more efficient than paging the entire app so it can resume in process.
BUT this doesn't resolve one of the biggest desires for 3rd party multitasking, and that is to actually have apps running in the background. See Pandora. There are other apps too...things that download/upload/stream all are desirable to be able to run in the background.
So far, I haven't seen any problems with this on my jailbroken iPhone, so I'm thinking Apple should be able to enable this without much problem either.
So that's 1 vote for it working well. As opposed to about 200 votes I've read for it being terrible.
I'm sure there are many factors at play here. What are your sources for that "200"? If it's anything like AppleInsider (which doesn't take the time to fact-check before slamming anything not Apple), I would say that's your problem right there. Maybe ask actual Android owners instead of Apple blogs.
Second, I have a Nexus One. Perhaps older or less-capable Android devices struggle. I honestly wouldn't know.
The best advice I can give you is to try it out yourself. I push my phone hard and it handles it beautifully. I keep all of my major apps running (calendar, Gmail, browser, messages, alarm clock, phone, news & weather, music, Google Voice, widgets) all the time and it's extremely quick and smooth, even if I add in a more resource-heavy app such as Documents To Go. If I need to start a graphics-intensive game, I can either manually kill off some apps or let Android do it for me, which takes literally under a second when launching the game.
So everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot? Even if I'm an idiot, at least I'll be in good company.
It could be a valid request from a certain perspective, but it isn't a valid complaint (or rant as you worded it). You are not justified in expecting Apple to knowingly allow an app that is designed to break the terms of service of a website.
That is more lip service that you really deserve. Grow up a little.
Don't you understand the internet? If you don't have exactly the same opinion as someone you are clearly an idiot.
Prepare to be blown away in June. It's not about multitasking, it's all about Apple's particular implementation of it. Just like they way they handled copy and paste.
Brilliant.
No one else has gotten Cut/Copy/Paste right or complete yet. MS' WP7 has the best implementation user-friendliness that I've seen. It's almost like MS thought about "how" users interact with their phones. Scary!
Quote:
Originally Posted by sdfisher
The iPod and iPhone have 128MB-256MB of RAM (and no virtual memory) and a CPU between 400MHz and 533MHz. Further, apps have been built for years assuming all of that is available to them.
There is, in fact, a huge technical problem with running multiple modern applications at once.
What Apple probably has waiting in the wings (if anything) is an Expose-like UI that switches between recently-used applications smoothly enough that it looks like they're running simultaneously. If it's very ambitious, it will actually page the application to flash storage when switching. But I think it's more likely that Apple will just make properly saving/restoring state part of the approval requirements, and somehow technically discriminate existing apps in a way to make it obvious to the user that they're using a legacy app.
If you're counting on multiple simultaneous GUI apps, you're going to be disappointed.
I don't expect the 2 older iPhones to get multitasking unless Apple can make iPhone OS considerably more efficient, which I doubt. Even when running the iPhone and checking mail and using Safari they had slow downs. The 3GS is the first iPhone HW that actually seemed ahead of the SW in terms of speed and my jailbreaking tests show that there is likely enough RAM in the 3GS to make backgrounding a a strong possibility with v4.0.
Clearly you don't really read my posts. The lack of multitasking was the only thing holding me back from getting an iPad. Now that has been resolved I will be getting a 3G model.
Sorry but I am the happiest one here.
1) It hasn't been resolved, this is just a rumour.
2) It's a rumour that has been expected for the past year, so I don't understand why this rumour tips the scale for you to buy a 3G iPad, but I am glad you are happy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ihxo
I hope iPhone will have flash, so I can take pictures in dark places.
Look, just go to a doctor for a prostate exam. It's not fun but it's necessary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fulldecent
FALSE.
Imagine "quitting" your mail app. What would that even mean? Why would you want to do that? How would you do it?
Or what if you want to "quit" mail but keep getting pushes, and then only see your other "open" apps. Isn't this just the same as making a new custom page on the home screen?
I'm not following your post. Mail services still run in the background based on your settings, even if you close the app. Even if you close the app right after hitting refresh the refresh isn't canceled.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
As others have posted, how it works is very important.
Is it:
1) Just a task switcher where all the running apps (and their data) reside in RAM
2) Is it a standard Paged environment where app memory is paged out based on dirty and LRU determinations
3) Will apps be packaged/loaded differently to minimize dirty pages
4) Will APIs be available to aid the developer to save/refresh state
A task switcher only, would, likely, limit the size and number of apps and increase the need for more physical RAM (cost/size/power and other tradeoffs)
[...]
It will be interesting to learn the answers!
Good questions. Having EVERY app you load run in the background is pointless I'm still expecting Apple to release a backgrounding API for the the v4.0 SDK, like they did with the Push Notifications. The fact is, most apps have no business running in the background.
Step 1: Apple makes the API so that switched apps can be put in a saved state (like games) and/or unneeded resources dropped for efficiency, etc.
Step 2: Devs that feel their app would benefit from be backgroundable utilize the API and (hopefully) follow Apple's guidelines.
Step 3: Users go to Settings on the iPhone to enable which apps will run in the background when they press the home button, just like they set which applicable programs will utilize Push Notifications.
Perhaps a naive question, but how come the iPhone cannot be used in 'disk mode' like iPods can?
Because that would mean the iPhone dealing with conventional file systems, something Apple doesn't want, which is in line with it's efforts to make THE WORLD seamless and intuitive.
I can't speak for Windows Mobile, but Android manages system resources great. If a new application needs memory, it smartly kills off ones that are unneeded. Applications idly sitting in memory aren't "performance robbing" and don't use any CPU so they aren't battery-killers either. In fact, it improves performance AND battery life, because if you switch to them again, they aren't relaunched.
Task killers are mostly unnecessary in the Android environment. The main users are those who see a task managers near the top of the Market and therefore think it's necessary. Of course, sometimes you want to make sure an application has a lot of memory to begin with, so in that case a task manager can be useful - just like how you're going to quit all your other apps before you run Logic on your Mac.
Also FTA:
This is just terrible journalism. Mac OS X allows users to install apps from any source. Are you saying Apple should control what I can install on my MBP? If no, then how is my phone different? Anyone who advocates for a closed-ecosystem app store is either an Apple shareholder/sheep or an idiot.
I find it truly reprehensible how people will defend such gatekeeping and obstruction (the very thing Apple was against with the whole "Think Different" campaign) using company-line justifications. Apple isn't looking out for you by not letting you install/run 3rd party apps; they're looking out for their bottom line.
Why do you insist on making inaccurate comparisons between a mobile device and a desktop computing system? And why is anyone else with a valid viewpoint categorically a "sheep" or an "idiot" by disagreeing with you?
The critical aspect here is as much memory management as power management, depending on the device of course. You don't need to quit out of other apps (depending on your equipment and the apps if you are running Logic because MacOSX does a decent job of memory management, and on the desktop you have few if any of the battery management concerns that are part of the mobile device use paradigm.
Resource management in Android is based around "garbage collection" not application pre-emptive memory demand as you seemed to state above. As such the garbage collection function will create overhead in addition to whatever other apps you are running as well. Applications "sitting in memory" while not requiring huge amounts of cpu cycles, still require state checks and garbage collection checks or blocks, depending on whether they enjoy persistent or temporary states - which still uses the odd cpu cycle - run enough of those and you see cpu utilization that can impact performance.
Somehow you have lost sight of these very basic facts in your commentary and reached out with your hearty "sheep" and "idiot" invitations to support logical and ernest discussion. Very Nice.
So far, I haven't seen any problems with this on my jailbroken iPhone, so I'm thinking Apple should be able to enable this without much problem either.
Ditto. On my iPhone 3GS I used Pro Switcher, which used a Palm Pre card-like style of multi-tasking, and it was simply beautiful. Ran really smooth.
That said, running the graphics-heavy Pro Switcher on my old iPhone 3G was a bit clunky. Backgrounder still worked fine though, at least well enough to run Pandora in the background.
Because that would mean the iPhone dealing with conventional file systems, something Apple doesn't want, which is in line with it's efforts to make THE WORLD seamless and intuitive.
They've come up with a different solution for the iPad in OS 3.2 though. There will be a disk mode, just not the traditional one we are accustomed to seeing. It will make it to the iPhone in due time.
I don't see them implementing full-blown multitasking on the iPhone, unless their goal is to destroy the simplicity of the OS.
Look at the UI for task-switching on computers: It's a total disaster. All the recent iterations of both Mac and Windows OS have gone to great lengths to deal with that disaster, and they've only made it worse - Expose and Spaces and Aero peek and Flip 3D and Live Thumbnails - they just clutter the UI and confuse anyone who isn't a computer geek. Even the simple fact that you can close a window on the Mac, revealing a hidden window but leaving the menu bar on the original program is confusing to many people who use a Mac all the time.
Presumably it will be simpler on the iPhone, but I see it confusing more people than it helps. Let's say you do run Pandora in the background. How often are people going to leave Pandora but unintentionally leave it running, and not know what's going on. Why is there music still playing? They go into the iPod app trying to turn it off, but that's not it. I see people do this right now with music on the iPhone - they think they can stop their music just by hitting the home button, and they don't know they left it on because the headphones were plugged in. Maybe they'll even get music playing both via the iPod and via Pandora simultaneously.
I want someone to describe how this is going to work and not be a UI disaster that confuses the hell out of regular people, while adding very little for power users.
Oh...I do have a VALID rant though. Apple still doesn't allow the downloading of YT videos to the iPhone. You need to go shopping on Cydia for that. I could really use that feature for say, studying OFF-LINE maybe. And I still can't send to and from / read and write from iDisk to iDisk. Ummm both are Mac products. What's up with that?
videodownload helper extension for firefox. name might be a bit off. you can even download as mp4 so no need for handbrake
Didn't we hear the same thing from the same "people familiar with Apple's plans" at the same time last year?! Right now it is a rumor and the funny thing is some people will buy the iPhone and iPad as if this was a promise form Apple. The same people will come back whining about it and how Apple is screwing their customers if they didn't get it in the next OS update.
I do think that the best way for switching between apps is the use of double tap Home button. As for the interface, I think Apple will use the same tab switching UI used by Safari. It easy and people are familiar with it. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
I also don't think it will be a free ride for developers. They will need to modify their apps to be able to run in the background while the user is using another app.
Multitasking is coming. Maybe this year maybe the next. It's like the End of Days, every generation think it is coming during their life time.
If this would allow a VOIP app to run at the same time as a browser app, then a CDMA iPhone could make calls and access data at the same time, couldn't it?
1) It hasn't been resolved, this is just a rumour.
2) It's a rumour that has been expected for the past year, so I don't understand why this rumour tips the scale for you to buy a 3G iPad, but I am glad you are happy.
It gives me a warm feeling inside that you are happy for me.
While this is still just a a rumor I will remain hopeful. The rumor doesn't tip the scale for me multi-tasking does.
For some Flash is the big issue, I could care less about Flash, I only point out that Flash 10.1 could resolve some issues for Apple if Apple and Adobe decide to work on hardware acceleration.
Front facing webcam could care less about that.
The only "want" I have had that the iPad currently lacks is multi-tasking. Once that is resolve I will most likely get a 3G version for both my wife and myself and a WiFi for my daughter.
I would like to see what the HP Slate has to offer but that device has sadly become one big mystery for some reason. Also while this may make you fall off your chair I am actually not all that interested in a Tablet that runs Windows 7.
Comments
Apple has sold millions of iPhones without multitasking. I think it's pretty clear by now that normal users don't care. The tech-wannabes do but not the general public. If anyone thinks this will in any way silence the critics they are sorely mistaken. The critics will always find something to bitch about. Multitasking on the iPhone will probably not be implemented in the way critics want it to be so they will still have a hard-on for Apple and its products. Never fear, Apple critics are never satisfied, ever.
Actually, one use that I can see personally for multi-tasking is to be able to keep iMapMyRun going while I change my iPod playlist, or even better while I listen to Slacker for a change of music while running. I don't think this will be limited to just technophiles. This is just the first use off the top of my head and will definitely get used as such at least a couple times a week.
Multitasking could be another settings option with the default set to the current arrangement.
When it's switched on a dialogue should appear to ask the user how many of their apps should be allowed to run in addition to the default apps. Then underneath this should be a switch for each app to enable or disable it's being used for multitasking.
I think with this arrangement everyone can be satisfied.
Apple has sold millions of iPhones without multitasking. I think it's pretty clear by now that normal users don't care. The tech-wannabes do but not the general public. If anyone thinks this will in any way silence the critics they are sorely mistaken. The critics will always find something to bitch about. Multitasking on the iPhone will probably not be implemented in the way critics want it to be so they will still have a hard-on for Apple and its products. Never fear, Apple critics are never satisfied, ever.
It's funny, I would have said exactly the same as you until this past Monday. I've always maintained that non-techy types really couldn't care less about multitasking, but on Monday my wife (far from techy) was complaining that when she'd been looking at her Yelp app, if she clicked to view the map, it automatically launched Maps, but that she had to re-start the Yelp app again to go back to it, so I guess non-techy users do want something along these lines as well.
You are right that the critics will continue to bang on about something though. Lack of Flash maybe, perhaps the lack of a file system. Apple must be gutted that the thing is selling so badly due to all of it's flaws
Just hopping off the Pedant Express at Grammar Central to point it out it really should be Exposé. All right all right I'm going.
Touché.
The iPod and iPhone have 128MB-256MB of RAM (and no virtual memory) and a CPU between 400MHz and 533MHz. Further, apps have been built for years assuming all of that is available to them.
There is, in fact, a huge technical problem with running multiple modern applications at once.
What Apple probably has waiting in the wings (if anything) is an Expose-like UI that switches between recently-used applications smoothly enough that it looks like they're running simultaneously. If it's very ambitious, it will actually page the application to flash storage when switching. But I think it's more likely that Apple will just make properly saving/restoring state part of the approval requirements, and somehow technically discriminate existing apps in a way to make it obvious to the user that they're using a legacy app.
If you're counting on multiple simultaneous GUI apps, you're going to be disappointed.
Unless you jailbreak and enable multitasking like we do today and it works just fine. What your suggesting is pretty much already in the iPhone OS. There's nothing stopping a developer from having the state saved and on relaunch resuming where the app was left off. This would be more efficient than paging the entire app so it can resume in process.
BUT this doesn't resolve one of the biggest desires for 3rd party multitasking, and that is to actually have apps running in the background. See Pandora. There are other apps too...things that download/upload/stream all are desirable to be able to run in the background.
So far, I haven't seen any problems with this on my jailbroken iPhone, so I'm thinking Apple should be able to enable this without much problem either.
So that's 1 vote for it working well. As opposed to about 200 votes I've read for it being terrible.
I'm sure there are many factors at play here. What are your sources for that "200"? If it's anything like AppleInsider (which doesn't take the time to fact-check before slamming anything not Apple), I would say that's your problem right there. Maybe ask actual Android owners instead of Apple blogs.
Second, I have a Nexus One. Perhaps older or less-capable Android devices struggle. I honestly wouldn't know.
The best advice I can give you is to try it out yourself. I push my phone hard and it handles it beautifully. I keep all of my major apps running (calendar, Gmail, browser, messages, alarm clock, phone, news & weather, music, Google Voice, widgets) all the time and it's extremely quick and smooth, even if I add in a more resource-heavy app such as Documents To Go. If I need to start a graphics-intensive game, I can either manually kill off some apps or let Android do it for me, which takes literally under a second when launching the game.
Hope that helps.
So everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot? Even if I'm an idiot, at least I'll be in good company.
It could be a valid request from a certain perspective, but it isn't a valid complaint (or rant as you worded it). You are not justified in expecting Apple to knowingly allow an app that is designed to break the terms of service of a website.
That is more lip service that you really deserve. Grow up a little.
Don't you understand the internet? If you don't have exactly the same opinion as someone you are clearly an idiot.
Possibly a moron too!
Really looking forward to the new OS, hopefully with lots of configurable home screen options too in terms of notifications and other dynamic content.
I guess this finally means the overworked Home button can get some much-needed rest.
When I read that double-tapping the Home button would enter Exposé my first thought was that it would get a lot more use.
Prepare to be blown away in June. It's not about multitasking, it's all about Apple's particular implementation of it. Just like they way they handled copy and paste.
Brilliant.
No one else has gotten Cut/Copy/Paste right or complete yet. MS' WP7 has the best implementation user-friendliness that I've seen. It's almost like MS thought about "how" users interact with their phones. Scary!
The iPod and iPhone have 128MB-256MB of RAM (and no virtual memory) and a CPU between 400MHz and 533MHz. Further, apps have been built for years assuming all of that is available to them.
There is, in fact, a huge technical problem with running multiple modern applications at once.
What Apple probably has waiting in the wings (if anything) is an Expose-like UI that switches between recently-used applications smoothly enough that it looks like they're running simultaneously. If it's very ambitious, it will actually page the application to flash storage when switching. But I think it's more likely that Apple will just make properly saving/restoring state part of the approval requirements, and somehow technically discriminate existing apps in a way to make it obvious to the user that they're using a legacy app.
If you're counting on multiple simultaneous GUI apps, you're going to be disappointed.
I don't expect the 2 older iPhones to get multitasking unless Apple can make iPhone OS considerably more efficient, which I doubt. Even when running the iPhone and checking mail and using Safari they had slow downs. The 3GS is the first iPhone HW that actually seemed ahead of the SW in terms of speed and my jailbreaking tests show that there is likely enough RAM in the 3GS to make backgrounding a a strong possibility with v4.0.
I like the idea of Exposé but I'm not completely sold on the double-tap of the Home button to execute, but there aren't too many option now, is there. I wonder if the number of 3rd-party apps will finite, like having 6 on the 2010 iPhone and 4 on the 3GS de to performance considerations.
I also wonder how you'd delete an app. Using a press-and-hold option to get squiggly icons like for the Homescreens whilst in Exposé would probably work well.
Clearly you don't really read my posts. The lack of multitasking was the only thing holding me back from getting an iPad. Now that has been resolved I will be getting a 3G model.
Sorry but I am the happiest one here.
1) It hasn't been resolved, this is just a rumour.
2) It's a rumour that has been expected for the past year, so I don't understand why this rumour tips the scale for you to buy a 3G iPad, but I am glad you are happy.
I hope iPhone will have flash, so I can take pictures in dark places.
Look, just go to a doctor for a prostate exam. It's not fun but it's necessary.
FALSE.
Imagine "quitting" your mail app. What would that even mean? Why would you want to do that? How would you do it?
Or what if you want to "quit" mail but keep getting pushes, and then only see your other "open" apps. Isn't this just the same as making a new custom page on the home screen?
I'm not following your post. Mail services still run in the background based on your settings, even if you close the app. Even if you close the app right after hitting refresh the refresh isn't canceled.
As others have posted, how it works is very important.
Is it:
1) Just a task switcher where all the running apps (and their data) reside in RAM
2) Is it a standard Paged environment where app memory is paged out based on dirty and LRU determinations
3) Will apps be packaged/loaded differently to minimize dirty pages
4) Will APIs be available to aid the developer to save/refresh state
A task switcher only, would, likely, limit the size and number of apps and increase the need for more physical RAM (cost/size/power and other tradeoffs)
[...]
It will be interesting to learn the answers!
Good questions. Having EVERY app you load run in the background is pointless I'm still expecting Apple to release a backgrounding API for the the v4.0 SDK, like they did with the Push Notifications. The fact is, most apps have no business running in the background.
Perhaps a naive question, but how come the iPhone cannot be used in 'disk mode' like iPods can?
Because that would mean the iPhone dealing with conventional file systems, something Apple doesn't want, which is in line with it's efforts to make THE WORLD seamless and intuitive.
FTA:
I can't speak for Windows Mobile, but Android manages system resources great. If a new application needs memory, it smartly kills off ones that are unneeded. Applications idly sitting in memory aren't "performance robbing" and don't use any CPU so they aren't battery-killers either. In fact, it improves performance AND battery life, because if you switch to them again, they aren't relaunched.
Task killers are mostly unnecessary in the Android environment. The main users are those who see a task managers near the top of the Market and therefore think it's necessary. Of course, sometimes you want to make sure an application has a lot of memory to begin with, so in that case a task manager can be useful - just like how you're going to quit all your other apps before you run Logic on your Mac.
Also FTA:
This is just terrible journalism. Mac OS X allows users to install apps from any source. Are you saying Apple should control what I can install on my MBP? If no, then how is my phone different? Anyone who advocates for a closed-ecosystem app store is either an Apple shareholder/sheep or an idiot.
I find it truly reprehensible how people will defend such gatekeeping and obstruction (the very thing Apple was against with the whole "Think Different" campaign) using company-line justifications. Apple isn't looking out for you by not letting you install/run 3rd party apps; they're looking out for their bottom line.
Why do you insist on making inaccurate comparisons between a mobile device and a desktop computing system? And why is anyone else with a valid viewpoint categorically a "sheep" or an "idiot" by disagreeing with you?
The critical aspect here is as much memory management as power management, depending on the device of course. You don't need to quit out of other apps (depending on your equipment and the apps if you are running Logic because MacOSX does a decent job of memory management, and on the desktop you have few if any of the battery management concerns that are part of the mobile device use paradigm.
Resource management in Android is based around "garbage collection" not application pre-emptive memory demand as you seemed to state above. As such the garbage collection function will create overhead in addition to whatever other apps you are running as well. Applications "sitting in memory" while not requiring huge amounts of cpu cycles, still require state checks and garbage collection checks or blocks, depending on whether they enjoy persistent or temporary states - which still uses the odd cpu cycle - run enough of those and you see cpu utilization that can impact performance.
Somehow you have lost sight of these very basic facts in your commentary and reached out with your hearty "sheep" and "idiot" invitations to support logical and ernest discussion. Very Nice.
So far, I haven't seen any problems with this on my jailbroken iPhone, so I'm thinking Apple should be able to enable this without much problem either.
Ditto. On my iPhone 3GS I used Pro Switcher, which used a Palm Pre card-like style of multi-tasking, and it was simply beautiful. Ran really smooth.
That said, running the graphics-heavy Pro Switcher on my old iPhone 3G was a bit clunky. Backgrounder still worked fine though, at least well enough to run Pandora in the background.
June??? We'll see this in action on April 3rd, right?
Nope. Not until the iPhone is refreshed in late June.
Because that would mean the iPhone dealing with conventional file systems, something Apple doesn't want, which is in line with it's efforts to make THE WORLD seamless and intuitive.
They've come up with a different solution for the iPad in OS 3.2 though. There will be a disk mode, just not the traditional one we are accustomed to seeing. It will make it to the iPhone in due time.
Look at the UI for task-switching on computers: It's a total disaster. All the recent iterations of both Mac and Windows OS have gone to great lengths to deal with that disaster, and they've only made it worse - Expose and Spaces and Aero peek and Flip 3D and Live Thumbnails - they just clutter the UI and confuse anyone who isn't a computer geek. Even the simple fact that you can close a window on the Mac, revealing a hidden window but leaving the menu bar on the original program is confusing to many people who use a Mac all the time.
Presumably it will be simpler on the iPhone, but I see it confusing more people than it helps. Let's say you do run Pandora in the background. How often are people going to leave Pandora but unintentionally leave it running, and not know what's going on. Why is there music still playing? They go into the iPod app trying to turn it off, but that's not it. I see people do this right now with music on the iPhone - they think they can stop their music just by hitting the home button, and they don't know they left it on because the headphones were plugged in. Maybe they'll even get music playing both via the iPod and via Pandora simultaneously.
I want someone to describe how this is going to work and not be a UI disaster that confuses the hell out of regular people, while adding very little for power users.
What's Flash?
Oh...I do have a VALID rant though. Apple still doesn't allow the downloading of YT videos to the iPhone. You need to go shopping on Cydia for that. I could really use that feature for say, studying OFF-LINE maybe. And I still can't send to and from / read and write from iDisk to iDisk. Ummm both are Mac products. What's up with that?
videodownload helper extension for firefox. name might be a bit off. you can even download as mp4 so no need for handbrake
Is it still OK to say that someone has an id-10-t problem?
OK. OK. I'm going now....
I do think that the best way for switching between apps is the use of double tap Home button. As for the interface, I think Apple will use the same tab switching UI used by Safari. It easy and people are familiar with it. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
I also don't think it will be a free ride for developers. They will need to modify their apps to be able to run in the background while the user is using another app.
Multitasking is coming. Maybe this year maybe the next. It's like the End of Days, every generation think it is coming during their life time.
1) It hasn't been resolved, this is just a rumour.
2) It's a rumour that has been expected for the past year, so I don't understand why this rumour tips the scale for you to buy a 3G iPad, but I am glad you are happy.
It gives me a warm feeling inside that you are happy for me.
While this is still just a a rumor I will remain hopeful. The rumor doesn't tip the scale for me multi-tasking does.
For some Flash is the big issue, I could care less about Flash, I only point out that Flash 10.1 could resolve some issues for Apple if Apple and Adobe decide to work on hardware acceleration.
Front facing webcam could care less about that.
The only "want" I have had that the iPad currently lacks is multi-tasking. Once that is resolve I will most likely get a 3G version for both my wife and myself and a WiFi for my daughter.
I would like to see what the HP Slate has to offer but that device has sadly become one big mystery for some reason. Also while this may make you fall off your chair I am actually not all that interested in a Tablet that runs Windows 7.